It’s always great to see the work of one of our researchers shouted out in the New York Times. It’s even better when it becomes the scientific basis of an argument thrown into the mix of a presidential campaign.

Nicholas Kristof asserted in his column on Sunday that when women are involved in the political process and given the capacity to shape public policy, everyone benefits, particularly when it comes to health.

Kristof, who covers human rights, women’s rights, health and global affairs for the Times, wrote in his column:

Put aside your feelings about Hillary Clinton: I understand that many Americans distrust her and would welcome a woman in the White House if it were someone else. But whatever one thinks of Clinton, her nomination is a milestone, and a lesson of history is that when women advance, humanity advances.

Grant Miller of Stanford University found that when states, one by one, gave women the right to vote at the local level in the 19th and early 20th centuries, politicians scrambled to find favor with female voters and allocated more funds to public health and child health. The upshot was that child mortality rates dropped sharply and 20,000 children’s lives were saved each year.

Many of those whose lives were saved were boys. Today, some are still alive, elderly men perhaps disgruntled by the cavalcade of women at the podium in Philadelphia. But they should remember that when women gained power at the voting booth, they used it to benefit boys as well as girls.

Miller, an associate professor of medicine and core faculty member of Stanford Health Policy, first wrote about this issue in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2008, arguing that women’s choices appear to emphasize child welfare more than those of men.

He presented evidence on how state-to-state suffrage rights for U.S. women from 1869 to the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave all women the right to vote, helped children benefit from scientific breakthroughs.

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Simple hygienic practices — including hand and food washing, boiling water and milk, refrigerating meat and the renewed emphasis on breastfeeding — were among the most important innovations in the 19th and early 20th centuries to help protect children from often-fatal diseases such typhoid fever, smallpox, measles and scarlet fever.

“Communicating their importance to the American public required large-scale door-to-door hygiene campaigns, which women championed at first through voluntary organizations and then through government,” explained Miller, who is also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

As women became more and more involved in state and federal politics, Miller found, child mortality declined by 8 to 15 percent, or 20,000 fewer child deaths each year.

“Public health historians clearly link the success of hygiene campaigns to the rising influence of women,” Miller wrote, citing examples with data and graphs.

That women have been — and can be — so influential seems like a no-brainer, but it’s nice to have the science to back it up.

Larry Diamond writes for online magazine The Cipher Brief how the extended period of democracy has not brought a dramatic deepening of democratic norms in Latin America countries.

Read the full article here.

FSI SENIOR FELLOWS FRANCIS FUKUYAMA & LARRY DIAMOND DISCUSS DEMOCRACY IN THE JULY/AUGUST ISSUE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Larry Diamond and Francis Fukuyama, senior fellows at the Freeman Spogli Institute, have both written essays in the July/August 2016 issue of Foreign Affairs. Follow the links below to read the full articles without a subscription block:

Diamond, who is also the former director of the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), takes stock of the global democratic recession and urges the next president to make democracy promotion a pillar of his or her foreign policy agenda in his article "Democracy in Decline."

In "American Political Decay or Renewal?" Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at FSI and the Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, analyzes the rising tide of populism as represented by the current candidates for the US Presidential elections.

In the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, Larry Diamond takes stock of the global democratic recession, and urges the next president to make democracy promotion a pillar of his or her foreign policy agenda. 

Click here to read the full article. 

Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law congratulates its undergraduate honors class for completing their original research and undergraduate theses. They graduated from Stanford University on June 12 with honors in their respective disciplines.

Graduates include Vehbi “Deger” Turan, who was awarded the Firestone Medal for his thesis entitled “Augmenting Citizen Participation in Governance through Natural Language Processing.” Turan’s project employed existing literature on democratic participation, case studies and an original algorithm in order to devise a means by which government agencies can evaluate public comments received via the Internet on political issues.

The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research recognizes Stanford's top ten percent of honors theses in social science, science and engineering among the graduating senior class.

Turan decided to explore this topic shortly after joining the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program.

According to the program’s Director Stephen Stedman, “After listening to a research seminar at our Center, Deger believed that he could develop an aggregation tool to help policy makers understand such immense data.”

Francis Fukuyama, the Mosbacher Director of CDDRL also noted, “Deger is perhaps the best example to date of why interschool honors programs are valuable. He is a computer science major who came to us expressing an interest in using his background in artificial intelligence to help solve critical public policy problems.” Fukuyama together with Associate Professor of Political Science Justin Grimmer advised Turan on his honor’s thesis.

Turan will be starting a new position at Atomic Labs’ Zenreach start-up after graduation.

The CDDRL Award for Outstanding Thesis was given to Rehan Adamjee whose thesis explored the different factors at play in choosing between healthcare providers in a rural area of Pakistan.

Adamjee and Turan are just two members of a the 2016 cohort of 11 honors students, many of whom traveled to foreign countries to collect original data, conduct interviews and research their thesis topics. Their topics range from timely case studies on the use of social media as a tool of empowerment to a glimpse at the effects of regional politics on healthcare reform in Post-Soviet Russia.

The 2016 class joins 76 graduates from CDDRL’s honors program since its launch in 2007.

The Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program trains Stanford students from diverse majors to write theses with global policy implications on a subject related to democracy, development and the rule of law. Students attend a class on research methods the spring quarter of their junior year. During their senior year, in tandem with the CDDRL research community and their faculty advisor, students conduct both local and international research in order to write their theses. Students travel to Washington, DC for the annual honors college to meet policymakers and members of the development community to enrich their thesis topics.

A list of our graduating students along with links to all their theses can be found below.

Meet our Class of 2017